The Golden Rendezvous. Alistair MacLean

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СКАЧАТЬ please forgive my rudeness. But I must hurry, Miss Beresford.”

      “Can I come with you, please?”

      “Oh, damn it all, yes,” I said irritably. I’d managed to look away from her eyes and start breathing again. “Come if you want.”

      At the for’ard end of the passageway, just beyond the entrance to Cerdan’s suite, I ran into Carreras Senior. He was smoking a cigar and had that look of contentment and satisfaction that passengers invariably had when Antoine was finished with them.

      “Ah, there you are, Mr. Carter,” he said. “Wondered why you hadn’t returned to our table. What is wrong, if I may ask? There must be at least a dozen of the crew gathered outside the accommodation entrance. I thought regulations forbade——”

      “They’re waiting for me, sir. Benson—you probably haven’t had the chance to meet him since you came aboard, he’s our chief steward—is missing. That’s a search-party outside.”

      “Missing?” The grey eyebrows went up. “What on earth—well, of course you haven’t any idea what has happened to him or you wouldn’t be organising this search. Can I help?”

      I hesitated, thought of Miss Beresford, who had already elbowed her way in, realised I’d now no way of stopping any or all of the passengers from getting into the act if they wanted to and said: “Thank you, Mr. Carreras. You don’t look like a man who would miss very much.”

      “We come from the same mould, Mr. Carter.”

      I let his cryptic remark go and hurried outside. A cloudless night, with the sky crowded with the usual impossible number of stars, a soft warm wind blowing out of the south, a moderate cross-swell running, but no match for our Denny-Brown stabilisers that could knock 25 degrees off a 30-degree roll without half trying. A black shape detached itself from a nearby shadowed bulkhead, and Archie MacDonald, the bo’sun, came towards me. For all his solid fifteen stone bulk he was as light on his feet as a dancer.

      “Any luck, Bo’sun?” I asked.

      “No one saw anything: no one heard anything. And there were at least a dozen folk on deck tonight, between eight and nine.”

      “Mr. Wilson there? Ah, there. Mr. Wilson, take the engine-room staff and three A.B.s Main deck and below. You should know where to look by this time,” I added bitterly. “MacDonald, you and I will do the upper decks. Port side you, starboard side me. Two seamen and a cadet. Half an hour. Then back here.”

      I sent one man to examine the boat positions—why Benson should have wished to get into a boat I couldn’t even imagine except that lifeboats have always a queer attraction for those who wished to hide, although why he should wish to hide I couldn’t guess either—and another to scour the top superstructure abaft the bridge. I started going through the various cabins on the boat-deck, chart-house, flag and radar cabins, and had Mr. Carreras to help me. Rusty, our youngest apprentice, went aft to work his way for’ard, accompanied by Miss Beresford, who had probably guessed, and rightly, that I was in no mood for her company. But Rusty was. He always was. Nothing that Susan Beresford said to or about him made the slightest difference to him. He was her slave and didn’t care who knew it. If she’d asked him to jump down the funnel, just for her sake, he’d have considered it an honour: I could just imagine him searching about the upper decks with Susan Beresford by his side, his face the same colour as his flaming shock of hair.

      As I stepped out of the radar office I literally bumped into him. He was panting, as if he’d run a long way, and I could see I had been wrong about the colour of his face: in the half-light on the deck it looked grey, like old newspaper.

      “Radio office, sir.” He gasped out the words, and caught my arm, a thing he would never normally have dreamed of doing. “Come quickly, sir. Please.”

      I was already running. “You found him?”

      “No, sir. It’s Mr. Brownell.” Brownell was our chief wireless operator. “Something seems to have happened to him.”

      I reached the office in ten seconds, brushed past the pale blur of Susan Beresford standing just outside the door, crossed over the storm-sill and stopped.

      Brownell had the overhead rheostat turned down until the room was less than half-lit, a fairly common practice among radio operators on duty night watches. He was leaning forward over his table, his head pillowed on his right forearm, so that all I could see was his shoulders, dark hair and a bald spot that had been the bane of his life. His left hand was outflung, his fingers just brushing the bridge telephone. The transmitting key was sending continuously. I eased the right forearm forward a couple of inches. The transmitting stopped.

      I felt for the pulse in the outstretched left wrist. I felt for the pulse in the side of the neck. I turned to Susan Beresford, still standing in the doorway, and said: “Do you have a mirror.” She nodded wordlessly, fumbled in her bag and handed over a compact, opened, the mirror showing. I turned up the rheostat till the radio cabin was harsh with light, moved Brownell’s head slightly, held the mirror near mouth and nostrils for maybe ten seconds, took it away, glanced at it and then handed it back.

      “Something’s happened to him all right,” I said. My voice was steady, unnaturally so. “He’s dead. Or I think he’s dead. Rusty, get Dr. Marston right away, he’s usually in the telegraph lounge this time of night. Tell the captain, if he’s there. Not a word to anyone else about this.”

      Rusty disappeared, and another figure appeared to take his place beside Susan Beresford in the doorway. Carreras. He stopped, one foot over the storm-sill, and said: “My God! Benson.”

      “No, Brownell. Wireless officer. I think he’s dead.” On the off-chance that Bullen hadn’t yet gone down to the lounge I reached for the bulkhead phone labelled “Captain’s Cabin” and waited for an answer, staring down at the dead man sprawled across the table. Middle-aged, cheerful, his only harmless idiosyncrasy being an unusual vanity about his personal appearance that had once even driven him to the length of buying a toupee for his bald spot—public shipboard opinion had forced him to discard it—Brownell was one of the most popular and genuinely liked officers on the ship. Was? Had been. I heard the click of a lifted receiver.

      “Captain? Carter here. Could you come down to the wireless office? At once, please.”

      “Benson?”

      “Brownell. Dead, sir, I think.”

      There was a pause, a click. I hung up, reached for another phone that connected directly to the radio officers’ cabins. We had three radio officers and the one with the middle watch, from midnight to 4 a.m., usually skipped dinner in the dining-room and made for his bunk instead. A voice answered: “Peters here.”

      “First mate. Sorry to disturb you, but come up to the radio room right away.”

      “What’s up?”

      “You’ll find out when you get here.”

      The overhead light seemed far too bright for a room with a dead man in it. I turned down the rheostat and the white glare was replaced by a deep yellow glow. Rusty’s face appeared in the doorway. He didn’t seem so pale any more but maybe the subdued light was just being kind to him.

      “Surgeon’s coming, sir.” His breathing was quicker than ever. “Just picking up his bag in the dispensary.”

      “Thanks. СКАЧАТЬ